"1) The magnitude of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is not determined by direct measurements, it is only a results of energy budget model calculations. The atmospheric infrared radiation emitted from greenhouse gases is monitored globally since the early 90ies. During those years, the CO2 concentration increased by 30 - 40 ppm, but is there any signature of this increase in the data ?

2) The energy budget model calculations yield an increase of radiative blocking of order 1-2 W/m2, mainly due to the CO2 increase. Yet the models cannot reproduce 30 W/m2 atmospheric short wave absorption (of the 90 W/m2 total). Should they be trusted for the long wave results on the level of 1 W/m2?

3) The 'general circulation models' translate 1 W/m2 radiative forcing into 0.7 Celsius temperature increase. They predict a catastrophic temperature increase in the coming decades, especially affecting the artic. The models could be easily compared to prehistoric climate situations, such as the early holocene, where the arctic was exposed to approx. 40 W/m2 more summer insolation than presently (see Milankovic) - which the Greenland ice sheet obviously survived.

4) The GCM's treat the Navier-Stokes equations in the laminar flow approximation, i.e., they treat the flow of water (and air) as if it was the flow of honey.

5) The temperature trends of the last 30 years show a strong north to south latitude decrease, while the global atmospheric CO2 distribution and its increase is very uniform."

He adds "Explanations to the above listed points 1) and 2)

"The most famous papers for energy budget calculations are those of the Trenberth group. When I started working in climate research, I studied their 1997 paper in detail and I thought that I had found an important term in the various processes which they had neglected. I approached Trenberth and he convinced me that the term was negligible.

He then pointed out to me what he considered their biggest problem, i.e. the 30 W/m2 deficit of the model for short wave absorption. I found Albert Arking's papers, who argues that most of those 30 W/m2 are absorbed in the atmosphere during fair weather situations. I found the paper of the Heidelberg group who searched for water dimer absorption as an origin for this deficit and had published positive results in a Science paper /Pfeilsticker et al/. However in the thesis of Lotter, these claims were no longer kept up.

My solar irradiation analysis results suggest that specific aerosols are the cause for the missing absorption. These aerosols are (very) small water droplets and absorption occurs at the water lines. It is textbook (Roedel) knowledge that for infrared emission in the range of 300 K, water behaves like a 'black body', i.e. it emits all frequencies in that range. So do cloud droplets and so do - most probably - smaller droplets of aerosol size. While for IR emission from clouds, the energy budget calculations include those emissions, for fair weather situations no aerosol emissions are considered. There, only molecular emissions are included which are determined using the HITRAN data base.

According to the energy budget papers, the greenhouse gas effect is considered to be strongest for fair weather situations. For cloudy or partly cloudy sky situations, the atmospheric IR radiation is more and more dominated by the clouds. If, at fair weather situations, there exists another important sorce of IR radiation apart from the greenhouse gas molecules, it would reduce the greenhouse gas effect.

There exists the PANGAEA collaboration of globally 30 to 50 stations where solar irradiation data are taken. This collaboration is coordinated by AWI. Most of the stations also measure 'long wave down', i.e. the atmospheric IR radiation. Most stations measuring LWD have 10 -15 years of data. So far, no common analysis paper on the time trend of the LWD results at fair weather situations exists, with the goal of extracting the increase of the greenhouse gas radiation due to anthropogenic effects. There exist global dimming studies, but they integrate over all solar irradiation (short wave down), including partly cloudy situations."

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comments:

1) "The magnitude of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is not determined by direct measurements, it is only a results of energy budget model calculations. " In a first step the greenhouse effect takes place as a changing IR absorption/emission spectra. IR lines of GHGs observed from space should broaden with increasing concentrations.This is observed since the first spectrometers were sent to space in the late 70s:http://www.scienceblogs.de/primaklima/2010/02/der-beweis-des-treibhauseffekts.php

John Harries from the Imperial college published several papers on this direct observation of the increasing GHG conc.http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~jeh/

2) I have to look into that

3)Annual mean insolation anomaly was ~0W/m2 (there might be a slight obliquity contribution making it non zero, but far from 40W/m2). Temperatures were about 2°C warmer in high latitudes. Without discussing the details of early holocene climate a similar situation (Eem=125 jyr BP) in terms of summer insolation lead to about 5°C warmer arctic and a considerable melting of Greenland.

4) ?

5) Southern hemisphere is the water hemisphere with a corresponding heat capacity.

Werner Weber to the comments of Dr. Hoffmann:to 1) line broadening and experimetal data on greenhouse gas effect

I do not question that increased CO2 concentration exists. I know that from the Mauna Loa data. My question is: do I get increased long wave down radiation from CO2 etc. and how much. The clearest data comes from fair weather situations. I have not seen any global analysis so far.

to 3) prehistoric climate model calculationsThere is Milankovic theory of the ice ages which seems to be the accepted theory.Milankovic says: No matter how cold the winter has been, if summer insolation is high enough, it will cause melting of the ice sheets. 10000 years ago, summer insolation was 60 W/m2 higher in the arctic than presently and all big northern ice shields were gone, except the Greenland ice shield. You know that from bore holes. 10000 years ago, perihel did coincide with summer solstice. 7000 years ago, after the 8.2 K event, all climate parameters were similar as today, CO2 concentration was 280 ppm or close to it, sea level was within 1 m of present.According to curves shown in wikipedia, arctic summer insolation was still higher by 40 W/m2. Today aphel coincides with summer solstice.I do not question that the average global annual insolation was the same as today. My question to you: Do you get in your model calculations the big melt of northern ice shields, say starting at the last glacial maximum 20000 years ago, increasing arctic insolation to 10000 years ago? In other words: can you model Milankovic?to 5) I agree that SH is mostly ocean and heat capacity is bigger. But how do you get the negative trend seen from 50 latitude south downward towards antarctis. Just look at ERSST or Reynolds OI.

1) I wrote about the actual greenhouse radiative signal, not about measurements of CO2. The greenhouse effect is best understood and defined by analysing outgoing IR radiation. The broadening/deepening of the lines observed from space is the direct consequence of more absorption and emission at higher/cooler layers. Please read the links and the original articles by John Harries.

The radiative balance at the Earth surface is more complicated. Whereas the radiative balance at the top of the troposphere is perturbed by only (order of magnitude) 1W/m2 the perturbation at the surface is more (perhaps ~10W/m2). However most of the 10 W/m2 is not a direct CO2 signal but changed hydrology and temperatures. Therefore IR down at the surface is a quite noisy signal (compared with the signal from space). Data are here

http://www.gewex.org/bsrn.html

BSRN is a Gewex sub project and results (in terms of signal detection) are discussed in Gewex Newsletter 4 (2004) by Wild and Ohmuhrahttp://www.gewex.org/gewex_nwsltr.html

They say:"First analyses of theavailable observational time series of LWD in theBSRN database show an overall increase over thepast decade."

Hmm, unfortunately not much interest in these questions. Since answers are lengthy, Hans, and might benefit of some figures I would like to mirror the questions/answers on my blog if that is ok with you?

I try to answer the different points when I have some time:

5) @Werner WeberThe aquestion now changed. Instead of southern hemisphere we speak now of 50°-90°S, about 25% of the southern hemisphere and 12% of the globe.

a) There are different SST data sets and different surface or near surface air temperature data sets. Here are some of them, allways for the Southern Oceans:

There are certainly data problems near the sea ice margin. In both the weekly analysis (at NCEP) and the daily analysis (at NCDC), we use a climatological fit between sea ice concentration and SSTs to generate SSTs at the sea ice margin. This helps tie down the SST analysis near the sea ice margin where there ae spare in situ and satellite measurements.

Very disputed paper using the sparse and uncertain data before the satellite era. The paper is speaking of an accelerated warming in the Southern ocean.

Summary from my point of view. Certainly there are interesting aspect in Southern Oceans climate (in particular sea ice) which must be analysed. But I dont see a clear contradiction to any IPCC statement or to global warming in general. SST trends in whatever sense are weak and hardly significant. Data are sparse and their quality is an important issue.

GEORG: You ask if you may mirror the questions/answers on my blog . I have no problems with that, but I wonder if Werner Weber would like that. Why not asking him? Send me an e-mail, and I foreward you his e-mail address. -- But, many thanks for your efforts to answer Weber's questions.

YEPH: If other blogs are behaving well, or are overly sarcastic or whatever, is not our business here.

5b) Here is the GISS Temperature Anomaly for the 15 year period from 1995-2009 relative to the climatology 1951-1980. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2010&month_last=8&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=0112&year1=1995&year2=2009&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=250&pol=regGISS is using Reynold v2 data set over the ocean.As one can see there are more oceanic areas with zero or even slightly negative anomalies (in particular the North Pacific and off Florida in the subtropical Atlantic). Such trends are neither remarkable nor an exception (in the sense "only Southern Ocean SSTs show no warming, so there must be something going on "). They are part of longterm (~decadal) circulation anomalies controlling more or less advection of warm/cold waters. GCMs do something quite similar. In case of Antarctica an important atmospheric circulation pattern (the Southern Annular Mode) and/or ozone/climate interactions were mentioned in a number of papers.http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Shindell_Schmidt.pdf

YEPH, if Georg Hoffmann choses to behave like a beserk on his weblog, I consider this his business, not mine. You do not need to read his blog, do you? I don't. On hjte other hand, i appreciate Georg#s comments here on Klimazwiebel in many cases useful and mostly formally balanced.

YEPH: I do not consider it my task to educate people how to behave; all what I consider a task is to make sure that we talk about issues in a manner, which allows a sustained discussion. On the other hand, meeting Georg and sharing a beer is always a pleasure.

Well, I found this blog because you criticised the way climate scientists behaved in their contact with the people out there. I find many things you say correct in a very scientific way. This is what science says. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If Georg Hoffmann doesn't want to have a beer with me, it is his personal decision, not mine. I know, and you seem also to know that you can still like people, even if they don't share your scientific views.

All over the climate blogosphere people speak about the arrogant behaviour of what I would call the "real climate gang". I think that the CRU-mails show a similar thing.

It is not my decision to be treated like an illiterate idiot on a climate blog. Most people out there know much less about science and especially climate science than I do.

I think that 99% of the people who would have been treated the same way would be really angry about the same behaviour.

I don't really know if Judith Curry or Roger Pielke Sr. are not illiterate idiots. But I am convinced a 100% that they are not.

Well they have been treated the same way than those lay men "climate deniers" like me.

Normally I could laugh about such a ridicoulous behaviour of grown up people, of climate scientists. But I experienced a similar behaviour all over the climate blogs.

It maybe that really "odd people" like Hans Von Storch have a beer with an "agressive" Georg Hoffmann and people known as "the team" and that they feel good about this postnormal situation.

I don't want to criticise the only people that are left for those who want to ask questions and like to have real answers.

The important thing for me is that people like you are there too. Unless I would have a really bad impression about climate science. I don't think my view is naive. The view of people like the "CRU gang" or Georg Hoffmann is naive in my humble opinion.

Best regards Yeph

PS You asked our opinion, but the opinion of other climate scientists is more important. I will trie to post less often an listen more. ;-) Thank you and Mr Zorita VERY MUCH for you kind behaviour!

Well, I found this blog because you criticised the way climate scientists behaved in their contact with the people out there. I find many things you say correct in a very scientific way. This is what science says. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If Georg Hoffmann doesn't want to have a beer with me, it is his personal decision, not mine. I know, and you seem also to know that you can still like people, even if they don't share your scientific views.

All over the climate blogosphere people speak about the arrogant behaviour of what I would call the "real climate gang". I think that the CRU-mails show a similar thing.

It is not my decision to be treated like an illiterate idiot on a climate blog. Most people out there know much less about science and especially climate science than I do.

I think that 99% of the people who would have been treated the same way would be really angry about the same behaviour.

I don't really know if Judith Curry or Roger Pielke Sr. are not illiterate idiots. But I am convinced a 100% that they are not.

Well they have been treated the same way than those lay men "climate deniers" like me.

Normally I could laugh about such a ridicoulous behaviour of grown up people, of climate scientists. But I experienced a similar behaviour all over the climate blogs.

It maybe that really "odd people" like Hans Von Storch have a beer with an "agressive" Georg Hoffmann and people known as "the team" and that they feel good about this postnormal situation.

I don't want to criticise the only people that are left for those who want to ask questions and like to have real answers.

The important thing for me is that people like you are there too. Unless I would have a really bad impression about climate science. I don't think my view is naive. The view of people like the "CRU gang" or Georg Hoffmann is naive in my humble opinion.

Best regards Yeph

I think my comment disappeared.

There was a PS. Thank you and Mr Zorita very much for your kind behaviour. Yous asked our opinion an I trie in the future to post a little less and listen more.

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